Friday, February 29, 2008

Hush My Mouse - What if...

Matthew and I have put together a recreation of what the original opening and closing to Chuck Jones' 1946 Sniffles cartoon "Hush My Mouse" might have looked like (similar to what Matthew did a couple months ago with "Bedtime For Sniffles"). The cartoon was originally a Looney Tune but was later reissued as a Blue Ribbon Merry Melody (minus its original titles). I think the results came out pretty good considering what we had to work with.

"Isn't it wonderful what you can do with some wire and a few electric bulbs?"

I created the title cards using the original artwork which was posted by Jerry Beck at Cartoon Brew awhile ago. Using PhotoShop, I pasted the title lettering as seen on the Blue Ribbon reissue onto it (I have no idea if it originally said "Sniffles in" above the title, but I thought it looked good). Next, I took the production credits and director's credit from "Hare Tonic" (1945) which was identical and used the same font style that most cartoons with existing credits from 1945-6 have (it's impossible to see, but I actually did Photoshop on the correct MPAA number... how's that for attention to detail?).

Next, Matthew edited on the opening to "Book Revue" another Looney Tune that was released in 1946. It didn't have a character headshot in the bullseye, making it likely that it was used for "Hush My Mouse" as well. The music playing over our fake opening was lifted from "Mouse Wreckers" (1948) and it actually fits quite nicely. Finally, it is believed that "Hush My Mouse" was the final Looney Tune to use the Porky in the drum end title, so that is what Matthew added onto the end here (again, lifted from "Book Revue").

Even with the jump cuts on the titles, it's still very nicely done (especially considering some of the sloppy audio fooling around some of the techs at Warner Home Video did on a few of the titles on cartoons released on Vol. 1-4 of the LTGC).

Now -- Wanna go for recreating the opening titles to "Tweetie Pie" using the original audio? ;)